The Wong Blog

Hair gels vary in how effectively they hold your hair together. Apparently someone somewhere has developed a 0-10 scale for categorizing this quality because when I was shopping for hair gel, some had ratings slapped on them. Currently, I’m rocking a Level 7 – “strong.” This was the lowest number I could find at the store. I’ve yet to see anything below that, though I suspect there’s “medium” (Level 5?) and “weak” (Level 3?). Level 0, the baseline, is probably water.

Are there gels with negative ratings? Gels that would mess up your hair rather than hold it together? If so, then Level -1 would probably be the equivalent of a gentle breeze. Level -5 would be a hurricane. A Level -9 would chop your head off like a guillotine. A Level -10 would disintegrate it on contact. [Developed by the Soviets, no doubt.]

Going in the opposite direction, Level 8 is “super” hold, Level 9 is “mega” hold, and Level 10 is “supreme” hold. [That's "uber" hold in German.]

Purportedly, the Iranians are developing a Level 12 hair gel that will not only style your hair effectively, but refine uranium, too.

My father has taken to wearing his hands-free bluetooth headset pretty much ALL THE TIME now. Why do you need to wear your bluetooth headset all the time, Father? With whom must you be in near-instantaneous and continous cell phone communication? Your covert counter-terrorist strike team?

Bluetooth technology is like fascism: it has a good side and a bad side. The good: convenient wireless control and connectivity. [Just like fascism.] The bad: everyone sporting these things acts as if their conversation has intergalactic importance. [Also like fascism.] They run around blithely talking into their headsets like they’re coordinating an assault on the Death Star or something when, in fact, they’re simply deciding who’s going to drop Spot off at the vet’s. [To be euthanized...]

Recently, I watched Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, listened to Peter Cetera’s The Glory of Love (the theme song from Karate Kid II), and waxed a car (not my own). Which got me thinking…

Before they passed away, Victor Wong and Pat Morita should have starred in something together, preferably as their characters from Big Trouble in Little China and Happy Days. Maybe Celebrity Deathmatch. Or maybe a buddy roadtrip movie about a wisened, slightly crazy Chinese-American wizard and a Japanese-American schizophrenic whose personality alternates between a cackling alcoholic burger-flipper and an alcoholic karate master/car-wash mogul. Their mission: to drive from San Francisco’s Chinatown to either Milwaukee, Wisconsin (to watch Yi Jianlian play for the Bucks) or Downey, California (to beat up Danny Larusso). Which way they go depends on which of Pat Morita’s personalities is driving. In any case, they never drive further than Reno, Nevada, where chaos ensues.

That would have been an awesome movie.

By the way, my take on Dim Sum: Thirty minutes of plot and dialogue stretched over ninety minutes of film. It was interminable. I’m sure the pacing and shots were deliberately slow and meditative, but the only thought I meditated on was how much I disliked Wayne Wang’s work. I guess Chinese Box was sort of good, but only because of supporting actors Ruben Blades and Maggie Cheung. I loooooved how the subplot with Maggie Cheung’s character resolved itself: Scar Girl wanders off into traffic. Wow, great. You call that a resolution?

No, dropping two A-bombs on your enemy – now that’s a resolution. It’s called “history,” Wayne. Learn from it.

Two posts in two days.

Stud.

I felt compelled – COMPELLED – to expound a little more on why I like some of the covers mentioned in my last entry.

Kung-Fu Fighting by The Wynners: I’m not sure which Wynner sang the lead vocals, whether it was Alan Tam, Kenny Bee, or someone else, but his English has a Chinese accent that’s thicker than Charlene Choi’s legs. To hear lyrics like “funky China men from funky Chinatown” delivered by an actual funky China man from an actual funky town in China (Hong Kong) makes me want to slap myself silly. And when the singer pronounces the Asian surnames mentioned in the song with the proper Chinese pronunciation, it’s enough to snap your brain stem. After fighting to understand three stanzas of semi-coherent jive Chinglish, hearing “funky Billy Chin” and “little Sammy Chung” delivered with the proper Chinese tones is jarring. This version takes an already absurd song and scales new heights of absurdity. It’s the Mount Kilamanjaro of absurd Asian covers. Carl Douglas would be proud. Or ashamed. Maybe both.

Take Me Home, Country Roads by Sam Hui: this song is not only huge in West Virginia, but apparently Asia, too. Part of this version’s appeal to me is that it’s a total lie. Let’s be frank: Hui has never called West Virginia home nor has he ever stepped foot there. He probably doesn’t even believe that such a place exists, except as a figment of John Denver’s imagination. Frankly, I’m not even sure if West Virginia really exists. With that said, here’s everything I know about West Virginia: Jerry West, Randy Moss, coal mining, Jennifer Garner.

That’s it.

I was in a Vietnamese restaurant the other day and they were blasting a CD of Christmas carols…all sung in Vietnamese. You have not lived until you’ve heard The First Noel sung in Vientamese. It was pretty sweet – as if we and the French had actually won that war…

If I ever start a radio station, it will be programmed to play a constant stream of Western pop covers as sung by Asian artists. Doesn’t matter if they sing it in English, Chinglish, Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. Just as long as the song was popularized in the West and subsequently covered by an Asian artist.

Among my favorites (and not necessarily because they’re good): Lemon Tree by Tarcy Su; Kung-Fu Fighting by The Wynners; Take Me Home, Country Roads by Sam Hui; Hotel California also by Sam Hui; Careless Whisper by Anita Mui; All Out of Love by Alan Tam; With or Without You by Utada Hikaru; Hey Jude by Stefanie Sun; Bohemian Rhapsody by Faye Wong; True Colors by Kelly Chen; and I Knew I Loved You by Edison Chen.

Now if some Asian pop star would just cover some vintage Warren G, then I’d be set. Andy Lau, mount up – it’s time to Regulate.